Ex-Financial Times Journalist Tom Foremski @ the Collision of Technology and Media

08

March

2013

|

01:33 AM

Europe/Amsterdam

Rupert Murdoch Compared With Saint Augustine In Interview On WSJ

It's strange to see the Wall Street Journal running an interview with Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, its owner.

The video interview is conducted by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution presumably to provide some distance between WSJ editors and Mr Murdoch, and defray critics that question WSJ's editorial independence.

It would have been far better to let WSJ's top editors conduct the interview because Mr Robinson's endless brown nose questions are more likely to prove critics right. At one point, the interviewer asks Mr Murdoch if he sees himself as Saint Augustine.

Mr Murdoch doesn't reveal much that's new and says that newspaper companies have a future, and that journalism is important to society. However, he is spinning off the WSJ and other newspapers into a separate company. Their performance has dragged down News Corp's profitable cable TV business.